When Help is Harmful.
I thoroughly support the idea that Poverty, Inc. introduced throughout the documentary. Through the film what I had taken away was that long term aid was more detrimental to third world countries around the world. While the film primarily focused on the countries in the continent of Africa, I believe that it can be applied in more situations such as other countries as well as even in smaller communities in more developed countries such as the United States.
Through this essay I must clarify that I do have some biases towards the idea of not giving aid where aid is not needed as I have lived in Kenya, a country in Africa for a period of time and members of my family also living there for much longer extended periods of time than myself. Throughout my time there I hadn’t seen a country with large amounts of poor people who were in dire need from larger and more rich countries such as the United States, I saw as the film stated, parts of a country that was simply disconnected from global trade because of the handouts that certain countries provided. From the people that I had meet there and observed there is always the opportunity for entrepreneurship. I’m not stating that it would be an easy feat but there is still no doubt, room to do so.
In the documentary it was stated that natural disaster help in the short term is more than ok if not needed but when the help begins to last longer than needed you start to observe a more disastrous effect. For example, when the United States began to export copious amounts of rice into Haiti at extremely low prices the farmers who were making a living off of selling produce, one of which was rice began to lose business and eventually deemed it necessary to try to find different means of occupation. This applies to other portions of the agriculture industry as well as other industries such as clothing. The film specifically mentions Tom’s shoes, so that is what I will also use for sake of simplicity in this essay for further explanation. When this specific company sells a pair of shoes they then donated another pair of shoes to those who are in need. Although this is positive in theory when you look at the long-term effects, small local businesses are now competing with impossible prices, which is free and are ultimately being driven out of businesses as they are unable to compete. Later on, when the larger company is having lower sales and not selling as many shoes, they are now not donating those free shoes anymore. Now you see a community that has no shoes as there are no smaller businesses anymore selling them.
A country (or even continent such as Africa) would thrive if forced for it’s peoples to create and put more time and money into its economy. For instance, if aid was terminated then you would observe an influx of people becoming entrepreneurs, farmers if they have the land in order to cultivate food, textiles and similar items for people who may live in cities or smaller communities closer to larger cities, and then more specific items for people who live in these large cities such shops, markets, etc. When an economy grows that means that a country is growing. This means that there are more jobs available in return. In the film it had mentioned that parents were and can be at risk to putting their children up for adoption although it has simply become an outlet to releasing this financial burden of the children. They give up the requirement of ensuring education, food, clothing, and other necessities. And the parents still continue to have a relationship with these children. I believe part of the reasoning behind this phenomenon is because jobs could be difficult to come by, especially if this is an exceptionally poor community, which would most likely receive more aid making it essentially impossible to have a functioning market in this area.
While I can say that I am a firm believer that aid needs to be seriously decreased to certain communities, countries, and continents I can’t say that it is solely because of the aid provided. The government of certain countries needs to be considered, there can be dictatorships or even the issue of organized crime organizations. Although, I am still a firm believer through my own experiences and new information through the use of documentaries such as Poverty, Inc. I believe that aid can be useful when applied properly but the people offer aid need to understand the fine line of help that is needed and help that is harmful.